The Box with Broken Seals

CHAPTER XIII

Towards six o’clock that evening, without any apparent change in the situation, Captain Jones descended from the bridge and signalled to Crawshay, whom he passed on the deck, to follow him into his room. The great ship was still going at full speed through a sea which was as smooth as glass.

“Getting out of it, aren’t we?” Crawshay enquired.

The captain nodded. His hair and beard were soaked with moisture, and there were beads of wet all over his face. Otherwise he seemed little the worse for his long vigil. In his eyes, however, was a new anxiety.

“Another five miles,” he confided, “should see us in clear weather.”

“Steamer’s still following us, isn’t she?”

“Sticking to us like a leech,” was the terse reply. “She is not out of any American port. She must have just picked us up. She isn’t any ordinary cargo steamer, either, or she couldn’t make the speed.”

“I’ve worked it out by your chart,” Crawshay declared, “and it might very well be the Blucher. I don’t think I made the altered course wide enough, and she might very well have been hanging about a bit when she struck the fog and heard our engines.”

The captain lit a pipe. “I am not in the habit, as you may imagine, of discussing the conduct of my ship with any one, Mr. Crawshay,” he said, “but you come to me with very absolute credentials, and it’s rather a comfort to have some one standing by with whom one can share the responsibility. You see my couple of guns? They are about as useful as catapults against the Blucher, whereas, on the other hand, she could sink us easily with a couple of volleys.”

“Just so,” Crawshay agreed. “What about speed, Captain?”

“If our reports are trustworthy, we might be able to squeeze out one more knot than she can do,” was the doubtful reply, “but, you see, she’ll follow us out of this last bank of fog practically within rifle range. I’ve altered my course three or four times so as to get a start, but she hangs on like grim death. That’s what makes me so sure that it’s the Blucher.”

“Want my advice?” Crawshay asked.

“That’s the idea,” the captain acquiesced.

“Stoke her up, then, and drive full speed ahead. Take no notice of any signals. Make for home with the last ounce you can squeeze out of her.”

“That’s all very well,” Captain Jones observed, “but there will be at least half an hour during which we shall be within effective range. She might sink us a dozen times over.”

“Yes, but I don’t think she will.”

“Why not?”

“If the theory upon which I started this wild-goose chase is correct,” Crawshay explained, “there is something on board this ship infinitely more valuable than the ship itself to Germany. That is why I think that she will strain every nerve to try and capture you, of course, but she will never sink you, because if she did she would lose everything her Secret Service have worked for in Germany ever since, and even before the commencement of the war.”

“It’s an idea,” the captain admitted, with a gleam in his eyes.

“It’s common sense,” Crawshay urged. “When I left Halifax, I was ready to take twenty-five to one that we’d been sold. I wouldn’t mind laying twenty-five to one now that what we are in search of is somewhere on board this steamer. If that is so, the Blucher will never dare to sink you, because there will still remain the chance of the person on board who is in charge of the documents getting away with them at the other end, whereas down at the bottom of the Atlantic they would be of no use to any one.”

“I see your point of view,” the other agreed.

“Then you’d better take my tip,” Crawshay continued. “There isn’t a passenger on board who didn’t know the risk they were running when they started, and I’m sure no one will blame you for not surrendering your ship like a dummy directly you’re asked. They’re a pretty sporting lot in the saloon, you know. All those newspaper men are real good fellows.”

The captain’s face brightened.

“Next to fighting her,” he soliloquised, stroking his beard, —

“The idea of fighting her is ridiculous,” Crawshay interrupted. “Look here, you haven’t any time to lose. Send to the engineer and let him give it to them straight down below. I’ll give a tenner apiece to the stokers, if we get clear, and if my advice turns out wrong, I’ll see you through it, anyway.”

“We can leg it at a trifle over nineteen knots,” Captain Jones declared, as he picked up his cap, “and, anyway, anything’s better than having one of those short-haired, smooth-tongued, blustering Germans on board.”

He hurried off, and Crawshay followed him on deck to watch developments. Already, through what seemed to be an opening in the walls of fog, there was a vision in front of clear blue sea on which a still concealed sun was shining. Soon they passed out into a new temperature of pleasant warmth, with a skyline ahead, hard and clear. The passengers came crowding on deck. Every one leaned over the starboard rail, looking towards the place whence the sound of the hooting was still proceeding. Suddenly a steamer crept out of the fog mountain and drew clear, barely half a mile away. The first glimpse at her was final. She had cast off all disguise. Her false forecastle was thrown back, and the sun glittered upon three exceedingly formidable-looking guns, trained upon the City of Boston. A row of signals, already hoisted, were fluttering from her mast.

“It’s the Blucher, by God!” Sam West muttered.

“We’re nabbed!” his little friend groaned.

“Wonder what they’ll do with us.”

Every eye was upturned now to the mast for the answering signals. To the universal surprise, none were hoisted. The captain stood upon the bridge with his glass focussed upon the raider. He gave no orders, only the black smoke was beginning to belch now from the funnels, and little pieces of smut and burning coal blew down the deck. Jocelyn Thew, who was standing a little apart, frowned to himself. He had seen Crawshay and the captain come out of the latter’s cabin together.

The blue lightnings were playing now unchecked about the top of the Marconi room. Another more imperative signal flew from the pirate ship. A minute later there was a puff of white smoke, a loud report, and a shell burst in the sea, fifty yards ahead. Crawshay edged up to where Jocelyn Thew was standing.

“This is a damned unpleasant affair,” he said.

“It is,” was the grim reply.

“You know it’s the Blucher?”

“No doubt about that.”

“What on earth are we up to?” Crawshay continued, in a dissatisfied tone. “We haven’t even replied to her signals.”

“It appears to me,” Jocelyn Thew pronounced irritably, “that we are going to try and get away. I never heard of such lunacy. They can blow us to pieces if they want to.”

Crawshay shivered.

“I think,” he protested, “that some one ought to remonstrate with the captain. Look, there’s another shell coming! Damned ugly things!”

There was another puff of white smoke, and this time the projectile fell within a steamer’s length of them, sending a great fountain of water into the air. “They are giving us plenty of warning,” Jocelyn Thew observed coolly. “I suppose we shall get the next one amidships.”

“I find it most upsetting,” his companion declared. “I am going down to the cabin to get my lifebelt.”

He turned away. Presently there was another line of signals, more shots, some across the bows of the steamer, some right over her, a few aft. Nevertheless, the City of Boston stood on her course, and the distance between the two steamers gradually widened. Katharine, who had come up on deck, stood by Jocelyn Thew’s side.

“Is this really the way that they shoot,” she asked, “or aren’t they trying to hit us?”

“They are not trying,” he told her. “If they were, every shot they fired at this range would be sufficient to send us to the bottom.”

“Why aren’t they trying?” she persisted.

“There’s a reason for that, which I can’t at the moment explain,” was the gloomy reply. “They want to capture us, not sink us! What I can’t understand, though, is how the captain here found that out.”

“How is it that you are so well-informed?” Katharine asked curiously.

“You had better not enquire, Miss Beverley. It’s just as well not to know too much of these things. Here’s Mr. Crawshay,” he added. “Perhaps he’ll tell you.”

Crawshay appeared, hugging his lifebelt, on which he seated himself gingerly.

“Can’t imagine what the captain’s up to,” he complained. “A chap who understands those little flags has just told me that they’ve threatened to blow us to pieces if we go on. — Here comes another shell!” he groaned. “Two to one they’ve got us this time! — Ugh!”

They all ducked to avoid a shower of spray. When they stood upright again, Katharine studied the newcomer for a minute critically. There was a certain air of strain about most of the passengers. Even Jocelyn Thew’s firm hand had trembled, a moment ago, as he had lowered his glasses. Crawshay, seated upon his lifebelt, with a mackintosh buttoned around him, his eyeglass firmly adjusted, his mouth querulous, was not exactly an impressive-looking object. Yet she wondered.

“Give me your hand,” she asked suddenly.

He obeyed at once. The fingers were cool and firm.

“Why do you pretend to be afraid?” she demanded. “You aren’t in the least.”

“Amateur theatricals,” he replied tersely, “coupled with a certain amount of self-control. I am a cool-tempered fellow at most times. — Jove, this one’s meant for us, I believe!”

They all ducked instinctively. The shell, however, fell short. Crawshay measured the distance between the two steamers with his eyes.

“Dashed if I don’t believe we’re giving them the slip!” he exclaimed. “I wonder why in thunder they’re letting us off like this! The captain must have known something.”

Jocelyn Thew turned around and looked reflectively at the speaker. For a single moment Crawshay’s muscles tingled with the apprehension of danger. There was a smouldering light in the other’s eyes, such a light as might gleam in the tiger’s eyes before his spring. Crawshay’s hand slipped to his hip pocket. So for a moment they remained. Then Jocelyn Thew shrugged his shoulders, and the tense moment was past.

“There seems to be some one on this ship,” he said quietly, “who knows more than is good for him.”

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